


Take This One As A Warning

by Tozette



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, blanket permission for podfic or translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3636864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uchiha Sasuke has sworn revenge on Haruno Sakura. Itachi just wants her to come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take This One As A Warning

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt from condomads: "ITASAKU PARALLEL UNIVERSE ROLE REVERSAL."

 

Itachi arrives moments before Sasuke, because he knows Haruno Sakura and he knows his baby brother and - here they both are.

“You won’t provoke him into killing you,” Itachi says with more confidence than he feels, because while Sakura won’t die here, that speaks more to her skills than Sasuke’s mental state.

Without the truth, his baby brother has been… spiralling.

“Itachi-san,” she says politely, as though they aren’t meeting in a dingy love motel in a poor village miles outside Konoha, as though there‘s no slash through the leaf symbol on her forehead protector.

“Sakura-san,” he returns her greeting. Itachi’s mother didn’t raise him to be impolite, after all.

(She raised him to be a killer, of course, but that’s neither here nor there.)

“Not today, perhaps. You can’t protect him forever,” Sakura says philosophically. “And somebody’s got to do it eventually. It may as well be Uchiha Sasuke. Your family will appreciate that.”

Itachi sighs. His eyes are dim and his chest hurts, but he can see Sakura clearly enough to be going on with. Her hair is a fluffy pink mop and unless she’s making an effort it stands out anywhere. It’s not clear - nothing is, anymore - but it’s definitely  _bright_.

Behind him, Itachi hears a crash and a crackle and the sound of a thousand screaming birds. Sakura smiles. Itachi resigns himself to the carnage.

Sasuke dives at her, too fast, sharingan whirling, and —

He is completely unsurprised when Sakura neutralises the chidori completely, breaks his wrist and uses his own reckless momentum to hurl Sasuke face-first into the wall behind her.

Itachi moves fast to cushion the impact. His brother doesn’t need brain damage to go with his broken bones.

“He’s still so weak,” murmurs Sakura, soft and contemplative.

Sasuke raises his head and snarls at her and what his struggles lack in finesse they make up for in fury. Itachi very nearly lets him go, because he is terrible at denying his brother anything.

He holds tight.

Sakura raises a hand and Itachi tenses, sharingan firing and spinning lazily in his own eyes, but all she does is wave her hand vaguely through the air, and — a wash of sparkles floats in the wake of her fingers, a distraction from the gentle hum that hides the secondary technique.

A second later, Sasuke sags in his arms.

That’s what she’s known for, after all. Haruno Sakura, a genjutsu specialist with chakra control so fine she can neutralise close-range jutsu with a single glowing hand. Haruno Sakura, the genjutsu specialist who can defeat the sharingan.

Haruno Sakura, destroyer of the Uchiha clan.

Sakura is so obviously not from any of the big clans, Itachi thinks, because she clearly understands very little about honour. It would have been more merciful to kill the Uchiha, one glorious overwhelming massacre. They’d have appreciated it more.

Now the Uchiha compound is full of blind amputees.

Itachi moved Sasuke out of there a week after the attack.

(There is, Itachi allows, no further chance of a coup. At least for another generation, and maybe that will be time for those bridges to mend. Itachi rather doubts it.)

“Stop baiting him,” Itachi says, gentle and polite but flat.

Sakura shrugs one shoulder. “He’s not trying hard enough. Unless you, Itachi, want to avenge your clan?”

“No,” says Itachi.

“Does he never wonder  _why_?”

“I’m sure he does.” Itachi is, too. He’s been asked. It was easier when Sasuke was younger.

“And?” Quickly - so quickly Itachi is relying on trained reflex instead of conscious thought - she flicks a kunai at him. He jerks his foot out of the way. It buries itself in the floor. His eyes flick to the handle, then back to Sakura.

Her expression never changes and neither does his.

“It’s classified. He does not have clearance. To say more than that is forbidden.”

“A good shinobi always follows orders,” Sakura quotes - straight from the rule book, of course.

“A good shinobi doesn’t abandon her village to join a criminal organisation,” Itachi points out. There’s no particular trace of irony in his voice, but he can see her lips curve. The sharingan devours his chakra but it gives him such beautiful clarity of vision.

Sakura must have noticed his attention, because she licks her lips. It isn’t subtle.

“Oh, the Akatsuki?” Sakura asks, flashing the metal band on her ring finger. It catches the light brightly.

Itachi ignores her bait and bends to lift Sasuke from the floor. He drapes him over his shoulder. “If that’s all, Sakura-san, I’ll be heading back to Konoha now.”

A scrape and a thud sound behind him, and Itachi doesn’t flinch or twitch. Sakura’s gaze doesn’t shift from Itachi, either - the other ninja’s arrival was no surprise to either of them.

There is a huge, many-scaled sword jutting from the wooden floor. It is in Itachi’s way, and it is attached to the other ninja.

Itachi has never seen such a large man before.

He has also never seen such a… greenish-grey man before.

It is a day for firsts, apparently.

He shifts on his feet. If he has to give his back to either of them, Itachi thinks, it will be Sakura. His tactical position is poor here: occupied with Sasuke in one arm and sandwiched between hostiles.

Itachi recognises him, because he’s in every bingo book in the elemental nations. He doesn’t say anything, though; whatever he knows about Hoshigaki Kisame is best kept to himself if there’s any chance he might actually have to fight him.

There is, surprisingly, no fight.

Itachi leaves swiftly and cautiously, ignoring Kisame’s sharp grin and provoking comments, and he knows he won’t feel safe from him - from _them_ , really - until he’s back in the village; perhaps even until he’s reporting this to the Hokage in the middle of the old man’s office, surrounded by ANBU and other jounin.

“…Aniki?” Sasuke’s voice is strained when he wakes. “Did she—?”

“Aa,” murmurs Itachi, and sets him gently down. Sasuke wobbles on his feet for a second, disoriented, but he recovers quickly enough. It’s only his wrist that’s broken, after all. “Sorry, little brother,” he sighs, and settles on a half-truth: “She got away.”

Sasuke gives him a narrow-eyed, disbelieving and suspicious.

“You can’t use the chidori like that,” Itachi adds, expertly diverting his attention. He leads Sasuke through thinking about what he did wrong in that fight - well, such as it was - as they walk.

Once they make it through the village gates, Itachi draws a long-handled kunai from his clothing and unravels the bandage wrapped around its handle. Inside is a scrap of paper: a hastily written note.

“What’s that?” Sasuke wonders. His voice is sharp and demanding.

“My grocery list,” Itachi informs him without looking up.

Sasuke gives him a very unimpressed look. “Have you been spending time with Kakashi-sensei again?”

“No,” says Itachi honestly, because if he had the time necessary to wait for Hatake to show up anywhere, he’d find something so much more productive to do with it. “I have to report to the Hokage, Sasuke. Will you be all right getting to the hospital?”

Sasuke rolls his eyes. “I’m not a child,” he says, from the lofty vantage of a six-month genin.

“Of course,” murmurs Itachi, tapping his brother's forehead protector fondly.

Sasuke bats at his hand, glowering, and they part ways.

Itachi folds up Sakura’s rough list of Akatsuki members, slips it under into his holster, and heads for the tower.

It’s a lovely day, if you have the eyes to see it. Itachi doesn’t, but he can tell the sky is cerulean and the sun casts long shadows as afternoon rolls on by. The village feels right: voices, smells, everything in its place.

Konoha is peaceful, but the ledger balances out in the end: she keeps her peace in the blood and sacrifice of her ninja.

“Report,” says Jiraiya, looking dreadfully weary, when Itachi arrives at the tower.

He’s right, Itachi thinks, he’s in no way cut out to be Hokage. Hopefully Tsunade will be persuaded to return soon.

“We’ll have to bring the fight to them eventually,” Jiraiya says in the end, eyeing one particular name on the list. _Konan_ , Itachi thinks, judging from the angle of the old man‘s gaze. The only woman. (For a split second Itachi thinks _typical_ , and wants to roll his eyes, but -- not even Jiraiya looks that intently at a woman when she's just a description on a page. He'd never get anything written that way.) 

“We can’t run the risk of them getting hold of more of the tailed beasts.”

“No,” Itachi agrees in the silence that follows. “We can’t.”

Konoha will have to take on Akatsuki eventually. 

And then if they survive, as in Itachi’s more extended fantasies - the truly wild ones, flights of mad fancy that Fugaku would definitely disapprove of (for Fugaku, with his blind eyes and single arm, is still capable of disapproving in full voice) —

—  if they all survive that, perhaps Sakura-chan can come home.

Itachi is sick of waiting to catch news of her, of seeing her her grim smiles and haunted eyes in ANBU reports, just like he’s sick of his dim vision and his rattling breath.  He doesn’t like killing and he doesn’t like war, but Itachi will do anything to keep his precious people safe.


End file.
